#1222 - Michael Shermer

Joe Rogan (0:07)

And we're live. Hello, Michael Shermer.

Good to see you, good to see you with your pile of your writing. Look at you got there. You got the Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, look at you, Skeptic Magazine.

Michael Shermer (0:20)

That's the latest issue, why is there something rather than nothing? We like to tackle the little questions.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

That's a deep one.

Michael Shermer (0:25)

You've dealt with this on the show.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

Yeah, too much. It's a, that's one that just, you know, when you're in traffic and you go, what is this?

Michael Shermer (0:32)

And you have someone like Neil or Sean Carroll or Lawrence Krauss talking about this. It's like, whoa, I'm not a physicist. I'm a social scientist. So for me, I come at it like, what do you mean by this word nothing? Because most of us have this idea of what I mean. Oh no, in physics, it means this other thing. Like, okay.

Joe Rogan (0:50)

Well, I think our limited understanding of what they're talking about. When I see those guys writing down on legal papers with all that scritchety, scratchety, crazy looking fake alien language mathematics, like, thank God you guys are out there.

Michael Shermer (1:05)

Well, I opened Heavens on Earth with imagine yourself dead. And most people go, well, I see myself in the casket and my friends and family are around, and hopefully they're mourning.

No, you wouldn't see anything, of course, you're dead. I mean, to imagine anything, you have to be conscious and alive. So you can't even picture being dead. So you can't picture not existing. And it would be the same thing. Imagine there's no universe. Okay, I see blackness. No, there's no blackness.

I mean, nothing would literally be not just no light, but no perception of darkness. Nothing, not even nothing.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

I was going through Instagram the other day, and there was this one person who was talking about the purpose of life and when you die, what's going to happen.

And I immediately just started laughing. I'm like, you don't know. How are you saying this? Like, when you die, what happens? And he was like one of them spiritual type characters, just kind of a huckster. There's a lot of spiritual hucksters out there these days.

Michael Shermer (2:04)

There are, yes. In the 90s, we debunked all those psychics talking to the dead. That hasn't been too popular in recent years, but that was a big thing.

Joe Rogan (2:12)

People caught on to that little earpiece thing.

Michael Shermer (2:14)

Yeah, the earpiece or just the cold reading.

I see a father figure. Is this a grandfather, father, uncle, friend of the family?

And he's saying something about it's okay for you to forgive yourself. Oh, okay. How about like, well, where was the will? He hid his will somewhere. Where is that? Because that's what we want to know. That ring he had, where is that?

Joe Rogan (2:38)

If you're just vague enough, I mean, like horoscopes, if you're just vague enough, people are like, oh my God, it's right all the time. It's always right. That's not even a real horoscope.

If you really want to pay attention to actual astrology that you, they have to know the date you were born, the time you were born. It's not just the month of August.

Michael Shermer (2:58)

Right.

Joe Rogan (2:58)

You know, it's like, they got to nail it down.

Michael Shermer (3:00)

They want to know morning or evening, you know.

Joe Rogan (3:02)

What do you think about all that stuff?

Michael Shermer (3:04)

It's all bunk. Is it?

Joe Rogan (3:06)

Why has it been around so long?

Michael Shermer (3:08)

Well, because the, well, it's called the Barnum effect, where, you know, PT Barnum, you just offer something for everybody. So if you make it general enough, you know, I sense you're an intelligent, wise person that people really enjoy your company, and you like going to parties and being with other people, and yet you like the quiet solitude of a walk on the beach, you know, and people going, yep, that is so me.

Well, I pretty much described every scenario you can have. You're alone, you're with people.

Joe Rogan (3:34)

But it's one of those things where, if you talk to someone who is an actual believer in astrology, like, they are so convinced. I got a friend of mine who's trying to tell me that he makes all of his decisions based on consulting with his astrologer.

Michael Shermer (3:50)

Well, Regan, well, Nancy Regan did it for his travel after he was shot. She got real paranoid about that.